![]() Positive vocalizations from dogs included growls, grunts, moans, pants, and whines while neutral vocalizations included barks, grunts, moans, and yelps. Each dog was tested individually, and just before the testing began, the dog settled down for its daily nap with its owner sitting at its side.ĮRPs recorded at Fz (A) and Cz (B) during wake (blue), drowsiness (red) and non-REM (green) from 200 ms before to 1000 ms after stimulus onset (0 point on the x-axis). To place the electrodes, they gained the dogs' cooperation via positive reinforcement (praise and treats). The research team measured the dogs' neural responses only with surface electrodes, a painless and non-invasive EEG method. They hypothesized that the research subjects would show sensitivity to both, and recruited owners and dogs (sample size = 13) from the database of the Family Dog Project at Eötvös Loránd University's Department of Ethology. In this study, the researchers wanted to know whether dogs in various sleep stages would show different responses to stimuli of differing valences from different species-in this case, humans and other dogs. Moreover, in dogs and in humans, sleep has been shown to be important for emotional processing and memory consolidation. They can correlate vocalizations of both dogs and humans with respective facial expressions, and with appropriate pictures. Studies have shown that much like humans, dogs in wakeful states respond with differing behaviors depending on the valence (levels of positivity and negativity) of vocalizations they hear. ![]() The work, titled "Event-related potentials indicate differential neural reactivity to species and valence information in vocal stimuli in sleeping dogs," was published in Scientific Reports.Ī team of researchers from ELTE Eötvös Loránd University ELKH-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group and the Research Center for Natural Sciences, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology, all in Budapest, Hungary, conducted a small explorative study in which they measured the event-related potentials (ERPs, a term for measurable neural responses) in family dogs to vocalizations from human family members and other dogs while the subjects were asleep.Įxisting research on dog behavior supports the use of dogs as good models for studies in comparative neurobiology. Now, a new study suggests that they can also process vocalizations during sleep.
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